


The High Priestess

by lea_hazel



Series: The Ride of the Knight of Flames [2]
Category: Original Work, Tarot (Divination Cards)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Community: purimgifts, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Religion, Religious Conflict, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 17:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13745907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: High Priestess Itee reflects on her exile to a small provincial temple and receives an unexpected visitor.





	The High Priestess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



The war had been going on for far longer than anyone had anticipated. The generals of Perata had assured the priestesses that they would drive the invaders off in a matter of weeks, months at the most, and here it had been over three years. Just as they had assured the priesthood three years past that the retribution actions against the heretical Hunters would not be met with reprisals from the lowland states. The holy council had met in the Mother Temple, and General Akaith had sworn a holy vow under the watchful eye of the Moon.

And yet here she was, three years thence. Separated from the marble halls and purifying pools of the Mother Temple, and estranged from her peers in the high priesthood. For her safety, said the generals, who insisted that the high priesthood could not remain congregated in one place, where they would make too tempting a target for the enemy. In this tiny provincial chapel, populated by only the lowest ranks of acolytes, there was not even a proper divination pool. Even if she wanted to look on the distant battlefields, see the progress of the war with her own two eyes, even that cold comfort was barred to her. All she could do was sit in her room in the cloisters and meditate, or climb up to the only parapet and gaze imperiously down at the flanks of the mountains and the narrow green valleys below.

High Priestess Itee sat down on a bench in the chapel's herb garden and sighed, a deep, long-suffering sigh fed by three years of repeated disappointment.

The sound of her own self-indulgent melancholy almost obscured the more pertinent sound that echoed up from the quiet valley, rising above the low background chatter of birds. It was a sound not often heard on the broken roads in this part of Perata, but one that Itee herself knew well. She hadn't always been a priestess of the Moon Goddess, and she hadn't spent all her life in the shadow of Perata's sheltering mountains. In her youth she'd been a wanderer, heart-sick and lost, and she had seen and heard many things that she hoped never to see or hear again. It seemed a visitor was coming to her temporary spiritual home.

The rider was forced to abandon their horse some distance from the chapel itself. Even the robust little mountain ponies that were raised in some of the villages to the south couldn't pick their way up the ancient stone steps that predicted every Moon temple, no matter how humble. This was quite deliberate, a boundary to separate the holy places from the more earthly concerns of the outside world. Her visitor, whomever they might be, seemed to accept this wisdom. Or at any rate, it did not deter them from proceeding their cause.

Itee forced herself to remain seated, her hands clasped before her, her overall position contemplative, if not strictly meditative. Long hours of study and contemplation had taught her a kind of patience that common people never knew, not in their lives of endless toil and appeasement. She was grateful for the lessons that the Moon temple had taught her, and never more than now, in the face of double uncertainty. The uncertainty of her future, and the future of all of Perata, however reluctant the generals were to admit as much. And the uncertainty of the moment, of a visitor who may be a pilgrim or an intruder, with no one about but the rankest novices to back her up, and no time to send for help if the visit turned sour.

She heard the visitor's footsteps well before she saw their distant figure appear from beyond a sharp turn in the path up the mountain. Heavy steps, booted, as expected from a rider from afar. A proud figure, still too far to accurately judge its height, dressed in worn leather and steel.

Not a pilgrim, surely.

She waited until the stranger reached the landing before the last flight of stairs, carved right into the ancient stone bones of the mountain. Their head and face was mostly obscured by a long, heavy wool scarf, patterned in bright colors, and she watched as they slowly unwound it, draping the two long ends back over their shoulders. The face revealed was weather-beaten, scarred, and slightly feminine in its features. For a time, they were both silent, the stranger standing on the steps and Itee sitting on her simple stone bench.

"What did you come to find here, pilgrim?" asked Priestess Itee, using the correct, traditional greeting.

"I'm no pilgrim," answered the woman finally, identifying herself by her choice of pronouns.

"Then why did you come here, stranger?" asked Priestess Itee. "Strangers are not wanted in the chapels of the Moon Goddess."

"My name is Hunter Farah," said the woman. "I came to seek justice."

[ ](https://imgur.com/Zc2lRL1)

[Image description: blue paper cut out of a throne and crescent moon representing the high priestess.]


End file.
